BPL Book Review: How to Break Up With Your Phone

By Denise Ford | Avondale Regional Branch Library

Reading How to Break Up With Your Phone: By Catherine Price will make you think and prioritize how you spend your time.   

Where’s my phone? You made it to work and you’ve left your phone at home, now you’re panicking. 

Do I stay at work or go get my phone? Are you sleeping with your phone? 

Does any of this sound like you? There are a lot of reasons for us to love our smartphones. 

They’re cameras, DJ’s. They help us keep in touch with our family and friends and the world around us. They also know the answers to every piece of trivia we could think to ask.

 These are just some of the many things our phones can do! Now, what is it about our phone that keeps us coming back for more? We have to admit it we’re hooked! 

Which one really drives us? Inconsistency or unpredictability.

 Check this out, touch a link, a webpage appears, send a text message, listen for the “whoosh” this type of reinforcement give us a feeling of control and drive us to want to be on our phone.

 According to Larry Rosen, a psychologist at California State University, our phones deliberately incite anxiety by providing new information and emotions that triggers every time we pick up our phone.

Unfortunately, this makes us worry that when we put our phone down we will miss something. When we check our phones we usually find something satisfying. 

Resulting in a burst of dopamine which makes us associate the act of checking our phone with the receipt of a reward. All of this can bring stress on the mind and body. 

With so many more important things in our lives to deal with, do we really want to make our phones top priority? 

 If you are trying to spend less time on your phone and just don’t know how to do it. Then this book is for you learn how to get phone control. Enjoy!

For more information, check out this column written by author Catherine Price that appeared in the New York Times in February 2018.